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Since the pandemic, canceled and delayed flights have become an increasingly common and frustrating experience.
According to the New York Times, 2.7 percent more flights were canceled in 2022 than in the previous year with more than 2500 flights canceled throughout the month of June alone.
While these statistics already sound terrible on their own, it can be hard to identify with the frustration of a canceled or delayed flight if you haven't experienced it for yourself.
But Luray of @imluray on TikTok recently shared an experience inexperienced flyers could empathize with and more frequent travelers had lived through themselves.
It began with a group trip to Italy Luray seemed to thoroughly enjoy based on her TikTok video history, but the trip back home was an entirely different story.
In the first video describing the incident, Luray captioned it:
"Ask me how my day is going..."
"Actually, don't."
In the text overlaying the video, Luray wrote:
"Delta tells you your flight was canceled, so your mom drives 5.5 hours to bring you home."
"But it wasn't actually canceled."
You can see the video here:
Luray flew from Italy to New York without a problem.
But once she was at the New York airport, waiting for her flight back home to Pennsylvania, was when all the issues began to spring up.
First, because the flight was repeatedly delayed, the departure location kept changing too, which resulted in nine gate changes, forcing the passengers of the flight to keep switching terminals in preparation to board their flight.
Luray stated:
"They changed the gate nine times."
"And it wasn't even a B1 to B2 situation, no, it was to separate terminals."
"I took a shuttle four times yesterday because they kept changing the gate."
Then the flight experienced an even longer delay:
"But I kept holding out hope."
"But then all of a sudden we're sitting there, thinking we're going to board in 5 to 7 minutes."
"Haha, nope. [They] delayed us twelve hours."
Luray, feeling like she was about to "lose her mind," decided she would rent a car and drive home, but all of the rental cars had already been taken. Hotel vouchers were an option, but they would not be made available until halfway through the wait time.
Three hours before boarding the flight, Luray received the worst news.
"So here I am, waiting in an airport, holding out hope that this flight is going to leave at 10 AM."
"But at 7 o'clock this morning, guess what? The flight got canceled."
"So now I'm stuck in New York, 5 and a half hours away from home, and I can't even rent a car, because they're all taken."
"And I'm trying to reclaim my bag, but they're telling me it's going to take four hours to be able to reclaim the bag."
You can watch the video here:
Out of options, Luray called her mom and explained the situation.
Her mom hung up the phone with her, but then called back to tell her she was driving to her to bring her home.
Luray was hopeful her bag would be available to reclaim by the time her mom arrived to get her.
TikTok was not only grateful for Luray having a ride home, but for great moms in general.
@imluray/TikTok
@imluray/TikTok
@imluray/TikTok
@imluray/TikTok
@imluray/TikTok
@imluray/TikTok
@imluray/TikTok
@imluray/TikTok
Fortunately, Luray reported she and her mom arrived safely home.
She found out later the flight attendant had given her false information as the morning flight had not been canceled.
This just goes to show how difficult it currently is to travel and how important it is to have some people in our lives who we can truly depend on, even if we've already put our faith in an airline.